The testing industry has so far had few incentives to ensure
that its products and procedures can withstand reasonable stress or scrutiny.

As the House and Senate conferees in Congress finally meet to hash
out seemingly small but devilish details in their respective responses
to President Bush's education plan, it seems likely that the most
far-reaching provision—the mandatory testing of every 3rd through
8th grader every year—will survive intact. While the states'
experience with high-stakes tests has so far been varied, complex, and
often stressful, we believe that, done properly, there is an important
role for these programs in strengthening public confidence in our
schools.

The testing industry has so far had few incentives to
ensure that its products and procedures can withstand reasonable
stress or scrutiny.

For this role to be fulfilled, however, Congress must also ensure
that the testing industry is able to live up to its new importance in
the lives of students and schools. A recent series of critical lapses
in the construction, administration, and scoring of high-stakes tests
affecting students in more than 20 states underscores issues that have
troubled knowledgeable observers for years. The testing industry,
dominated by a handful of unregulated companies, and on whose
performance the educational careers of millions of American students
increasingly depend, has so far had few incentives to ensure that its
products and procedures can withstand reasonable stress or
scrutiny.

In fact, it has a history of resisting just this sort of
accountability. In 1981, New York state Sen. Ken LaValle proposed the
nation's first "truth in testing" legislation, a bill that proposed
regular disclosure of the contents and scoring procedures of each
edition of the SAT administered in New York. The College Board and the
Educational Testing Service (owners of the SAT) lobbied fiercely
against it, spending millions of dollars to argue that students had no
right to determine whether or not their answers were scored correctly
and predicting the crippling of the college-admissions process.

Congress must ensure that the testing industry is able
to live up to its new importance in the lives of students and
schools.

A few years later, the admissions process had not collapsed, the
tests had fewer overtly discriminatory or otherwise flawed questions,
and even the ETS had agreed that the law had been a great success.

Over the past six years, almost every state has introduced mandatory
elementary and high school tests; President Bush's plan would make that
mandate a national one. Since poor performance on these tests has
serious consequences for students and educators, they need the same
sort of openness that truth-in-testing brought to the college and
graduate school admissions process.

As superintendents and state departments of education across the
country have discovered, market forces alone cannot protect the
integrity of this crucial process when most of the information required
by the states and districts to make informed decisions is held by the
testing companies and disclosed only at their pleasure. Furthermore, an
entire class of "customers"—students, parents, and
citizens—has effectively no access at all to the information, and
hence no way to participate in some of the most important decisions
with which schools are faced. Clearly, this situation will only get
worse as the number of tests and test-takers expands drastically over
the next few years.

We believe that a national truth-in-testing provision is called for
to prevent calamities on a much larger scale, and have proposed that
such a measure be added to the president's education legislation now
being considered by Congress. We suggest that each time a test is given
pursuant to federal requirements, the testing agency be required to
disclose for timely public inspection relevant information regarding
the construction of the test and its items, as well as the actual
questions and answers used, a description of the formulas used to
convert raw responses to scaled scores, and a disclosure of any claims
made by the testing company about the accuracy of scoring and the
timeliness of reporting. In addition, the testing agency would have to
give a breakdown of significant differences in response rates by
different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Testing agencies would also
be required to explain in easily understood language what steps have
been taken to ensure that the test is fair to test-takers of all
backgrounds, and to specify what steps may be taken to challenge a
score.

Over the past six years, almost every state has
introduced mandatory elementary and high school tests.

These provisions essentially mirror those of Sen. LaValle's original
bill, which has worked so well for the people of New York.

We need trustworthy accountability systems to help restore faith in
our public schools. Open disclosure has proven to be an effective
method of ensuring fair practices without intrusive regulation. The
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and GAAP provisions (outlining
"generally accepted accounting principles") are the bedrock on which we
have built the world's most extensive and democratic financial markets.
Standardized disclosures for real estate sales and mortgage loans
provide information and protection for all parties.

Why should the "market" of educational opportunity have any less
protection? And why should the testing companies, on whom we rely to
bring accountability to our schools, themselves be unaccountable?

John Katzman and Steven Hodas are the co-authors of Class Action
(Random House, 1995) and the co-founders of Homeroom.com. Mr. Katzman is the founder
and chief executive officer of The Princeton Review.

John Katzman and Steven Hodas are the co-authors of Class
Action(Random House, 1995) and the co-founders of Homeroom.com. Mr. Katzman is the founder
and chief executive officer of The Princeton Review.

The State
Assessment Advisor at Homeroom.com says that "a little
knowledge can go a long way toward helping educators, students, and
parents make sense of these tests, as well as the stream of articles on
the subject that regularly appear in the media." The organization also
provides information and guidance for educators, parents, and homeschoolers to
encourage success in state assessments.

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